Thursday, November 20, 2014

Day 56: gained 1/2 pound in a day. Lesson: do not weigh yourself daily.

Feeling not quite as exhausted. Followed the plan well today.

Long drive up past Westchester and back for a friend's father's wake.
Our dog was very angry that we were leaving, as I just retrieved her
from the babysitter last night. Sometimes I wish I could come up with an
excuse to make her a therapy dog so I could take her everywhere with me.

I'm not sure I know how to behave at a wake. I only met the deceased once. It's my husband's close friend's father. I find myself conversing
about… Almost anything. And making light conversation. We were laughing
a bit with my husband's friend and his wife which felt natural and
normal – it's kind of our way of injecting a bit of normality. But some
part of me did wonder if we were making others look askance.

No jokes about John's father or anything inappropriate like that.

After my grandmother's funeral, we all went back to the house and I
found an essay I had written when I was 16. I was supposed to interview
an older relative, and of course she was the only one who lived within
90 miles of us. In fact she lived a quarter-mile away.

My
grandma had a few mental issues, something I didn't realize when I was a
kid. I just thought she was eccentric and I can always make her laugh,
so nothing really seems strange to me. But in reading this essay years
later, I realize how skewed her point of view was, and we were all
laughing uproariously at this view of my grandmother through 16-year-old
eyes.

At that time, it was a laugh we all very much needed.
There was a lot of family drama surrounding my grandmother's death. My
mom took the brunt of it, and she really needed a good laugh.

Anyway… I am happy to be healthy enough to go and be of support to my
husband for events like this. And to have been of some support to my
family on my ten-day trip to South Carolina that I just returned from.

And of course to perform my goofy songs and go out to waffle house
afterwards and have a blast with my friends. I take none of this for
granted, as I've had periods where I've been hospitalized or trapped in
the house because I can't make it up and down the one stair to the
outdoors.

I'm very grateful for the level of health that I have right now, and I only intend to get even healthier.

December 8, I get oral surgery. I'm taking homeopathic remedies every
day to prepare for it. We're going to reopen where two of my wisdom
teeth were extracted and dig around looking for infections and dead bone
fragments. I can't believe I'm signing up for this.

About Me

"Lupus and Humor" is a blog by Carla Ulbrich (The Singing Patient). The purpose of the blog is to help others live healthier, happier lives by sharing what has helped/ not helped in Carla's 20+ years of having lupus (SLE).
Humor has been one of the things that has consistently been helpful, and is incorporated fairly regularly into the posts.